Etimology
From Middle English table, tabel, tabil, tabul, from Old English tabele, tabul, tablu, tabule, tabula (“board”); also as tæfl, tæfel, an early Germanic borrowing of Latin tabula (“tablet, board, plank, chart”). The sense of “piece of furniture” is from Old French table, of same Latin origin; Old English used bēod or bord instead for this meaning: see board. Doublet of tabula and tavla.
noun
table (plural tables)
Furniture with a top surface to accommodate a variety of uses.
A group of people at a table, for example, for a meal, meeting or game.
A two-dimensional presentation of data.
(music) The top of a stringed instrument, particularly a member of the violin family: the side of the instrument against which the strings vibrate.
The flat topmost facet of a cut diamond.
Examples
Set that dish on the table over there, please.
He had one hand on the bounce bottle—and he'd never let go of that since he got back to the table—but he had a handkerchief in the other and was swabbing his deadlights with it.
A very neat old woman, still in her good outdoor coat and best beehive hat, was sitting at a polished mahogany table on whose surface there were several scored scratches so deep that a triangular piece of the veneer had come cleanly away, […].
The baron kept a fine table and often held large banquets.
The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again; […] . Our table in the dining-room became again the abode of scintillating wit and caustic repartee, Farrar bracing up to his old standard, and the demand for seats in the vicinity rose to an animated competition.
That's the strongest table I've ever seen at a European Poker Tour event
Table 9 wants another round of beers.
John always gets the best tips because he gets the best tables! It's not fair!
I’m using mathesis — a universal science of measurement and order …And there is also taxinomia a principle of classification and ordered tabulation.Knowledge replaced universal resemblance with finite differences. History was arrested and turned into tables …Western reason had entered the age of judgement.
The children were practising multiplication tables.
Don’t you know your tables?
Here is a table of natural logarithms.
On this evidence they will certainly face tougher tests, as a depleted Newcastle side seemed to bask in the relative security of being ninth in the table.
Related words
synonyms
(computing): grid, vector
hypernyms
(computing): array
(furniture): furniture
hyponyms
billiard table
coffee table
dining table
dinner table
dressing table
drop-leaf table
end table
examination table
gateleg table
kiddie table
milking table
negotiating table
negotiation table
occasional table
pier table
pool table
roller table
round table
table tennis table
tea table
toilet table
vanity table
worktable
coordinate terms
(furniture): chair
verb
table (third-person singular simple present tables, present participle tabling, simple past and past participle tabled)
To tabulate; to put into a table or grid. [from 15th c.]
(now rare) To supply (a guest, client etc.) with food at a table; to feed. [from 15th c.]
(obsolete) To delineate; to represent, as in a picture; to depict. [17th–19th c.]
(non-US) To put on the table of a commission or legislative assembly; to propose for formal discussion or consideration, to put on the agenda. [from 17th c.]
(chiefly US) To remove from the agenda, to postpone dealing with; to shelve (to indefinitely postpone consideration or discussion of something). [from 19th c.]
(carpentry, obsolete) To join (pieces of timber) together using coaks. [18th–19th c.]
To put on a table. [from 19th c.]
(nautical) To make board hems in the skirts and bottoms of (sails) in order to strengthen them in the part attached to the bolt-rope.
Examples
to table fines
At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipioni
tabled and pictured in the chambers of meditation
In a raucous Commons, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, confirmed he had tabled a formal motion of confidence in the government, backed by other opposition leaders, which MPs would vote on on Wednesday.
The legislature tabled the amendment, so they will not be discussing it until later.
The motion was tabled, ensuring that it would not be taken up until a later date.
[A]fter some clatter offered us a rent of five pounds for the right to shoot here, and even tabled the cash that moment, and would not pocket it again.
Related words
related terms
tabulate